


She who dares at all, must dare all

by caycep



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, I apologise in advance for the complete mess Kara is, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-23 07:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20004313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caycep/pseuds/caycep
Summary: Fill for the prompt: Kara confesses to being Supergirl and Cat has been hurt by the constant lies and hiding (beforehand) and believed Kara doesn't trust her.





	She who dares at all, must dare all

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Habren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Habren/gifts).



> @Habren Thank you so much for the opportunity to work on this prompt! I loved writing it, and I hope you'll enjoy what I did with it <3

I’m not even sure how I ended up like this: sitting alone, perched on the window sill, staring into the night. The city out there sleeps, or I think it does. That’s how I picture it at least: thousands upon thousands of bodies lying down, hugging the blankets, or curled up on their side, face buried in the pillows, all sweat and dishevelled hair, lightly shaken by the endless tide of waxing and waning dreams.

To tell you the truth I wish I could join them, but hey, things don’t always go the way I want them to. Sometimes the best I can do is improvise, think quick on my feet, make the best out of a bad situation, but I digress-

I feel numb, exhausted. I only notice the breeze because my hair keeps ending up in front of my eyes and I get the urge to tuck it back behind my ears.

Honestly, I don’t understand. Everything was fine, I felt fine, until I wasn’t. Besides, this mood doesn’t even sound like me at all. I am many things but brooding is just not one of them.

I could’ve at least bothered to suit up. I bet if anyone on the other side of the street looked outside their window, they would think I’m suicidal. After all, here I am: jeans and a t-shirt, sitting at the edge of an open window, feet dangling into the darkness. One effortless push away from jumping off. What do they know that I couldn’t hurt myself even if I wanted to? I could fall from this ledge a thousand times and emerge without a scratch.

I was fine. I was fine. Everything was going absolutely dandy. Life as usual. Ups and downs, you know? Monsters, adversaries, people coming back from the fucking future, their wife in tow, just to tell me they still had feelings for me. And my mother, oh my mother alive all these years, far away and yet so close. This whole time I thought her a cloud of dust in the sky, I thought of Krypton on fire, I thought of the screams of all the children, I thought of the screams of me as a child as I watched it burn, and-

Evidently I have a lot on my mind. I do my best to keep it at bay, but sometimes I just end up like this, numb and exhausted, tears threatening to fall from my eyes at any moment. Anything could set it off, the smallest thing, a shard of a memory, even an abstract idea.

Cat.

And then I cry. I cry till my eyes hurt, until my chest heaves heavy with sobs, and my throat is scratchy and the only other thing would make me feel better would be to punch something until it disintegrates under my knuckles.

Fucking fuck fuck.

***

The thing is, when Cat decided to leave National City, I was relieved. I mean, I was devastated, of course, at first. I’d spent years yearning for her company, inching closer and closer, treasuring every hug, every moment, every time we locked eyes, and it was absolutely unbearable. When she left, it felt as if someone broke off a piece of my heart and ran away with it.

I cried even harder than I was crying just now, I cried for months. I had to go and get actual real life drunk, and I had to learn to hate hangovers, I mourned her, I texted her in the middle of the night, I hovered outside her window, hoping she’d look, wishing Supergirl had even a shred of an excuse to talk to her.

Why do I even talk about myself in the third person? Who am I? Julius fucking Caesar? It’s my alter ego but it’s still me, ugh- I’m sorry, I’m just a little emotional.

It’s just that, as I was saying, I was relieved. I was fine. I was hurt and then I moved on. I was hurt and then after a long long time things were fine again, I could go out wearing a sunny smile without feeling like a damn liar. I could meet up with Lena, have lunch, spend a whole pleasant afternoon at work without ever once, for a single minute, thinking about Cat.

And then, still, even after all this time, I have days like this, days where it all comes crashing down like a giant fucking asteroid hitting planet Heart.

Look at me, I’m a poet now.

  
  


***

I guess I just can’t do it anymore. If I ever had a breaking point this is it, turns out.

All I can do is put my costume on, slip into my super-persona like a snake trying to crawl back into its old skin: dry and crackly and ill-fitting. Stomping boots and powerful fists, and a skin tight suit of armour to hold me together lest I fall over like a pile of rocks.

Within a few seconds, I am out the window and into the night sky. The air is dark, cold, in an intense sort of way. It feels wonderful, like only flying into the night at full speed can be.

I might have whiled and whooped and done a few twirls in the sky when nobody was looking, but honestly, who are we kidding, they were the whoops and whirls of a convict walking to their death. I sealed my fate when I decided to fly east, towards imminent demise.

  
  


***

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Supergirl?” she says it with a smirk, and my stomach drops to the floor.

Recklessness is the only force moving me now, as I say: “we have to talk.”

“Do we, now?” she smiles again, and my resolve is all but shattered.

“I can’t do it anymore, Cat, I just-” I stammer, grasping for extra words that don’t come.

She stares at me, mildly confused, I guess a part of her knows what I’m about to bring up but she also doesn’t strike me as someone who’s looking forward to that conversation.

“Cat, it’s me, it’s Kara, it’s… it’s me.”

“Oh.” Cat looks at me sharply. A wave of emotions crosses her face, painting her features in what is almost certainly disappointment.

For a moment I think she might continue, but she just glares at me, opening and closing her mouth, as if on the verge of saying something, then abruptly changing her mind: once, twice, three times; finally she scoffs loudly and breaks eye contact.

“I just…I couldn’t keep it from you any longer.” I take a few steps towards her, cape flapping in the wind. We are close now, so close I can smell her, the night air blending with the unique flavour of her skin, the whiskey, her perfume and hair products, and-

I take another step, and wrap my arms around her, tightly. My left hand on the small of her back, my right caressing her cheek. She looks up at me, startled by the sudden burst of affection. I lean closer, my face towards her face, oh-so slowly, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I’m repeating the actions I rehearsed in a thousand dreams. I’m doing the brazen horrible things I was always too shy, too awestruck to start, the path I could see and never take and yet now somehow I’m barrelling down a hill at full speed, heedless of what I might hit along the way.

I don’t understand, I don’t remember our lips pressed together, I just remember the thundering beat drum of my heart, filling me with fire from head to toe. Rolling, consecutive waves of thought-killing shivers, the heat of her so close to me, so great, so violent I’m afraid I might spontaneously burn up.

I remember pushing a little further, I remember her mouth open, her tongue touching my lips for the briefest of seconds, a spark that might have just caused an explosion, and died instead. The distance crushes me as she pushes away from me, like a curtain of ice, foggy and impenetrable.

“You stupid, stupid girl” she whispers, not looking me in the eye. “How can someone as smart as you be so stupid?”

“What?” Is the only thing I manage to say, after almost a minute.

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to do that?” She says incredulous and hurt.

Something is definitely wrong. Why does she look upset?

What the fuck have I done.

“I’ve given you all the opportunities Kara, I have put them on a silver platter for you god knows how many times.” Her voice is streaked with something poisonous, vile, shrieking. Not unlike the high pitched edge of panic, but more solid and tense.

“You really think I didn’t know?” She continues “Your identity, Kara, is the worst kept secret in National City.”

“But I-” I try to interject but she stops me with a sharp gesture of her hand. She takes a few more steps back, she seems to get bigger instead of smaller with the distance.

“Oh of course, you were trying to protect me, is that what you’re trying to say? At least have the decency to spare me that utter nonsense.”

“But it’s the truth!” I half yell. I am now thoroughly confused. I did the thing. I did it. I finally unravelled the screenplay of my dreams and played it out in perfect detail. She just didn’t play her part. It’s not my fault if she-

“I was trying to protect you, I swear, if anything had happened to you, or Carter-”

“Don’t you fucking dare mention my son, Kara.” I swear she grows an inch taller at this, and a shade fiercer.

She takes a deep breath and seems to steady herself a little.

“Do you seriously think that anything, anything at all would’ve changed for me, if you’d been honest with me a little sooner?” She chuckles at her own words, then adds “Well, anything other than avoiding this farce, I guess.”

“Let me be absolutely clear, darling. I gave you a chance. I gave you two, three, a thousand chances, and you’ve lied to me every single time. And you know why you’ve done that? Oh you sweet absolute idiot? You were not doing it to protect me, you were protecting yourself.”

Saying that those words leave me speechless seems at the very least an understatement.

“You were a coward, you chose not to trust me with your so called secret, and now you’re expecting me to… what? Forget all that?”

I don’t know when I started crying again, but here I am, with tears flowing down my cheek and nowhere else to turn.

“I guess not forget, but, maybe… try something different?” I try to get closer, but my body seems heavier than normal, moving it a feat of incredible effort. “I came all the way here, I did it, I finally told you the truth, I finally-” I start sobbing again.

“A day late and a dollar short, dear.”

Oh heartless ice queen, oh mistress of my heart, why kick me when I’m down? Have I really been this blind? Have I caused as much grief as I have suffered myself?

I glance up at her, wiping tears from my face. She certainly doesn’t look happy. She looks like someone that’s been keeping something big and angry chained at the borders of her heart, and is now faced with the absurd realisation that setting it free, undoing its bonds doesn’t really change much of anything.

“Please, Cat,” the temptation of falling to my knees is very strong, “I know you’ve waited for this too. Why throw it all away now?”

“Well call me spiteful, but I believe I deserve better.” She looks at me, the angry glint is gone from her eyes, and I think I can see a glimmer of tenderness underneath all the venom.

“And you know what? I have the feeling you’re going to try and change my mind.”


End file.
